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Guest column: More to plane crashes than story let on

David Vorbeck, For the Journal & Courier;
9:58 a.m. EDT June 23, 2014

By Michael Heinz/Journal & Courier-- A Lafayette Aviation plane takes off as St. Mary Healthcare resident Walter Timm has his "bucket list" wish to fly in a small airplane fulfilled Friday, June 24, 2011, at Purdue Airport in West Lafayette. Timm and Bob Truhart, also a St. Mary resident, are fulfilling a "bucket list" wish to fly in a small airplane.(Photo:
J&C file photo
)

Hyperbolic best describes Thomas Frank's lead piece in his series on general aviation that recently ran in the Journal & Courier. Per mile flown comparables indicate that general aviation is "safer" than automobile transportation and the economic leverage that general aviation provides is greater than almost any other industry short of energy production and technology.

In the West Union, Iowa, accident cited by Frank, the National Transportation Safety Board accident report indicates the probable cause as "the pilot's failure to abort the takeoff, his failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the takeoff and the pull-up to avoid obstacles which resulted in an inadvertent stall. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, the fence and the tree line."

As with all transportation accidents – aviation, automobile, rail and marine – there is a chain of causation. Should any link in that chain be broken, the accident could have been prevented all together, the fatalities avoided or the seriousness of the injuries reduced. Accidents and mistakes happen, complex mechanical systems do break down.

The West Union, Iowa, accident is, in fact, instructive of a systemic need for more robust pilot training, particularly low-time pilots flying high-performance or complex airplanes. On that terrible day, a young pilot with less than 75 hours of experience was flying an airplane that Federal Aviation Regulation 61.31 defines a "high-performance," and per regulation requires additional training.

Frank's reporting is emblematic of a broader societal problem wherein none of us can, or ever should be, held accountable for our actions. Behind every tragedy is a conspiring group of individuals, corporations or government agencies who recklessly disregard safety. Perhaps?

Regardless of what may have been a mechanical problem that resulted in a loss of engine power, the tragedy in Frank's lead example was clearly exacerbated by the airplane's impact with the runway in a left-hand bank, aerodynamically stalled condition.

Having grown up in the flying business and been a certified flight instructor for more than 30 years, giving thousands of hours in-flight instruction and lecturing to thousands of ground-school students in every state (except Hawaii), it is my opinion that the crux of the problem we face today is the lackadaisical, casual Friday attitude we, the American society, have developed around serious, rules-based activities and professions.

Drivers texting, pilot unions fighting to retain the jobs of a commercial flight crew that lands its passenger-filled airplane at the wrong airport, police officers leaving drunken death threats on citizens' voice mail, convicted drunken drivers zipping around on scooters, politicians "sleep-driving" because they are victims of addiction, clearly healthy drivers reaching in to their glove box to hang their handicapped parking tag, police officers running red lights, and on and on and on.

We have become a society of rule benders and granters of exceptions to the rules; only the most serious consequences are ever laid at the feet of the instigators, and then only when every possible attempt to shift the blame to a corporation, an illness or government agency has been exhausted.

The public, all of us, have the right to the expectation that the general aviation system is safe. I do not know any of the details beyond the NTSB's report on the West Union, Iowa, tragedy, but clearly pilot error contributed to seriousness of the tragedy. It is my opinion that low-time private pilots are not as proficient as I witnessed growing up and that they seem to take their avocation less seriously.

In a society where we take convicted drunken drivers driving around on city streets, county roads and state highways on motorized scooters as commonplace, aren't we all taking everything less seriously?

Vorbeck is a Lafayette financial planner and a certified flight instructor.